Congreve, The Way of the World
John Dryden, Fables
Queen's Royal Cookery
East India Company sales catalogue
The Spectator
Jonathan Swift, A Proposal...
Sugar in Britain
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Bartholomew Fair
Trade and the English language
Swift, A Modest Proposal
East India Company: Bengal textiles
English arrives in the West Indies
Hogarth, Harlot's Progress
Cities in chaos
Polite conversation
James Miller, Of Politeness
Samuel Richardson, Pamela
Advert for a giant
Muffin seller
The Art of Cookery
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Johnson's Dictionary
Sterne, Tristram Shandy
Lowth’s grammar
Rousseau, The Social Contract
Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer
Captain Cook's journal
Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland
Burns, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
Anglo-Indian newspaper
Notices about runaway slaves
First British advert for curry powder
Storming of the Bastille
Olaudah Equiano
William Blake's Notebook
Thomas Paine's Rights of Man
Walker’s correct pronunciation
Wollstonecraft's Rights of Woman
Songs of Innocence and Experience
Scots reached a literary peak in the 18th century in the work of Robert Burns (1759–96), later acknowledged as Scotland’s national poet. This poem ‘To a Louse’ is from his first published collection: Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), also known as the ‘Kilmarnock Volume’.
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Burns wrote both in standard and non-standard English, but is mainly celebrated for his use of Scots. This poem contains features still widespread in Scotland, such as canna (can’t), sae (so) and gae (go), and less familiar terms such as grozet (gooseberry) and smeddum (powder or finely ground grain).
Shelfmark: C.39.e.38.